


Beauty

by Canarii



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Backstory, F/M, Gen, Multi, Other, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual Abuse, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-07
Updated: 2011-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-27 01:04:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/289876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canarii/pseuds/Canarii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one could understand what she did. They didn’t know exactly what it took to be Daddy’s little girl. (A character study on how the bitch was born.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beauty

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: Through S4
> 
> Trigger Warnings: MANY. Content includes and alludes to sexual abuse, non-con, pedophilia, and incest.
> 
> Notes: This is NOT an anti-Bela fic. I love and find her character fascinating, hence the fic. Pardon me for my potentially incorrect Italian, it’s been a while. Also I really felt the need to shower after writing this.

Bela Talbot was always great. Even before she was Bela at all.

Always the brightest, the biggest personality, the centre of her own privilaged universe. She was a shining star of a child, and she’d known it.

She was ten, and one of the teachers at her creme de la creme private school was going on about some achievement. Maybe it was an exam, or an art project, or some merit award. Funny what details don’t stick. But she remembers beaming her brightest smile up at the circle of adults above her, hanging onto Mummy’s perfectly manicured hand

“…Abby’s such a delight to teach”, the ass-kissing instructer had prattled on, “So smart, and so mature for her age.” Her parents had nodded as the teacher simpered, and Abby had looked up proudly with a smile missing one single canine tooth. She was, after all, the tallest girl in her class.

“Yes, yes she is”, her father’s voice intoned from above, and as his fingers stroked lingeringly over her hair, her mother’s hand tightened ever so slightly around her own.

***

At first it was nice nice, Daddy taking time off work to spend time with her. The movies, lunch, the park that’s a long, lonely drive from home. But she’s smart, smart enough to know that something’s not right.

Feet swinging off the edge of the couch as she waits for one of these outings. Eleven years old and vainly proud of her polished mary janes and pink courderoy trousers that match the clip in her hair. Mummy made sure all of her outfits were coordinated. Appearances were important, after all.

“You ready, sweetie?” Her father’s voice echoed as he entered the sitting room. In her memory his voice is clearer than his face, always loud, encompassing. She could always shut her eyes until it was over, but not her ears.

She’d nodded, and bounced off the couch, only to be stopped by a firm hand at the waist,

“In this weather? You’ll be way too warm in those, why don’t you go put on one of your new dresses?” The hand drifts down to her hip.

He smiles down at her with a face that seems to be all teeth, and something in the depths of her eleven year old heart chills.

She changes, and she learns to hate dresses.

***

“Look at you”, he says warmly on her thirteenth birthday, “All grown up.” The band of the training bra she’s filling out far to fast is tight on her ribs, crushing and suffocating. And the heavy makeup she’d applied with the help of her mother is dry on her skin, stretching her own false smile. Smiling was the easy part.

She sits down to dinner, and can’t hide the pleading in her eyes as familiar hands creep up her dress from knee to thigh and higher still. Across the table, her mother eats in silence, gaze on her plate and tight hands occupied with glass after glass of wine. Abby’s silent cries for help go unnoticed that evening. And many others after.

***

He calls her beautiful at night.

“Such a pretty girl.”

Hands up her shirt.

“My beautiful little girl.”

Pajama pants down to her ankles.

 _“Mi bella figlia”_

He’d taken a class in italian for some overseas business venture. Just enough to sound sophisticated in expensive restaurants.

She closes her eyes.

***

“Molly’s haveing a sleepover tonight and everyone’s going…”, the voice of a deceptively average whiny fourteen year old rings out.

“Your father wants to take you out to dinner tonight, you’ll have to see Molly another time.” Her mother’s long, bony (when had that happened?) fingers tricklelightly over the piano keys like restless spiders.

“But Muuuum…”

“Enough!”, Jane Talbot snaps, turning to face her daughter sternly.

“Please don’t make me go,” Abby almost whispers.

“You just need to…be nice to your father, alright? Just be very nice to him”, her mother’s voice shakes and she turns back to the piano to avoid her daughter’s dumbstruck expression.

She knew.

Abigal Talbot, age fourteen, understands everything in a moment. The woman at the piano was not the one in the wedding photo over the mantle. She’d gone gaunt, grey, tired. Beauty faded, after all.

She'd known. All this time.

Abby runs wordlessly back upstairs to her room and locks the door.

***

“Abby? Sweetie?”

The voice at the door.

“Come on, darling, we’ll be late for dinner.”

She hides under her covers, four years old again and hiding from the monsters she was afraid had crept from her storybooks to her wardrobe.

“Abby!”

The key in the lock. Blankets can’t help.

***

They’re late for dinner.

***

She fights the first time, still stunned and hurt by the shock of her mother’s betrayal. He hits her. Just once, palm across one pretty cheekbone that strikes her to tears. Face down in the pillows, she tries to tune out his apologies and endearments, and eventually just stops struggling altogether, body and mind.

 _“Mi bella figlia”_

It’s Sunday night. When morning comes she covers up the bruise with foundation and goes to school, passing her mother without a word in the doorway.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednsday, Thursday nights pass. She memorizes the patterns on her ceiling and the shadows on the insides of her eyelids.

***

“Someone’s got a secret admirererrrrr”, Molly Fitzgerald sings cheekily at her across the picnic tacle. Abby looks up, if only to remind herself where she is.

“Jeromy?” Molly repeats, nodding at a boy across the playyard, he’s juggling a football and watching the two of them with a broad, broad smile. “He so fancies you, you’re so lucky, you’re so pretty, if I-“

Abby doesn’t even bother excuseing herself. She runs to the toilet and vomits what little lunch she’d gotten down,and doesn’t stop until her stomach feels as empty as the rest of her. Hollowed, she slides limp down ontp the linoleum tiling until the final bell of the day finally rings out the false promise of freedom.

She doesn’t go home. Her shoes wear tracks in the turf below the swings as the hours count down. The sun is setting. Night is inevitable.

“I can help you”, a voice calls from the swing beside her. And Abby listens.

***

She doesn’t wear a dress to the funeral. Solemn and silent in crisp black slacks and a blouse, she drifts throughout the crowds at the wake, snatches of conversation catching on her like spiderwebs.

“She’s clearly in shock, poor dear.”

“What a tragedy, and so young to go through-“

“Yes, and such a beautiful child...”

The mirror on the dresser has been cleared of obstructions, all family photos were centred around the caskets in the next room. Abby Talbot. Age fourteen; orphan, murderer, looks into the reflection she’d avoided for the past four years.

Beautiful? Wide green eyes framed by long lashes, a well structured face? Lush lips, a delicate neck, cascading hair? Beautiful like a cat, maybe, or a snake, she thinks.

 _Bella._

 

“Yes”, she says quietly, narrowing her gaze defiantly into the glass. “I am.”


End file.
